Imagine you are five years old and it's Christmas day. You rush downstairs to the tree to see what Santa has left and find not a thing, not one present. You look at the carefully left mince pie and glass of milk by the chimney and see it untouched. What has happened?

You just don't know what to think so you run off to find mum and dad. They are looking very sad, and with tears in their eyes tell you that "Santa didn't come", in fact they say "He didn't even know you existed and doesn't even have our address".

What a shock that would be, your whole life would seem to crumble, you wouldn't know what to think, what a horrible experience...

However when you think of it from Santa's point of view, he has quite a few (million) people to visit, so it's not surprising that he might miss one, especially when they haven't gone to any trouble to tell him where they live..

The really sad thing however, is that this is happening to countless businesses every day, their websites never getting a visit simply because "no one knows they exist" and "no one has their address". Thus no one, including Santa, ever comes to call and the websites sit there all by themselves and are no use to man nor beast.

But what is the answer to their plight?, it's quite simple really, their websites need marketing, they need someone to "tell" the Search Engines that they exist and make sure that their site when visited, "tells" the right story, one that will get them noticed in the crowd, and get them those all important visits.

This "marketing" is called Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO for short) and contrary to many is not a black art, but one that needs good old fashioned hard work and the knowledge of how the Search Engines work. It's all about looking to see what words people are using when they a searching for what the website is "selling" and then "weaving" these words into the web sites pages, in the right place in the right way and in right frequency.

It's very important however to remember that these pages have to "tell" their story to both the Search Engines and any human visitor, to do one is no good, you have to do both, and that takes a bit of skill.

Alas, though, to work only on the pages will more than likely not be enough, you also have to prove that a website is popular enough to merit getting a listing, and that means getting lots of links pointing at it. Of course these have to be the right links, which is another story, but get it all right and Santa (and all those other lovely visitors) will be sure to call.

So don't be the owner of a lonely website, go and get it "marketed", get it optimised for the Search Engines, you'll not regret it.